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Us in 48 Words
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It’s not that I kowtow to David Fincher, but I do tend to dig his flicks: Fight Club, Panic Room and The Game, which includes my favorite not-safe-for-work piece of dialog ever (just click here… it’s the third section of quotations down). Zodiac is Fincher’s latest piece of cinematic brilliance, and this one stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chloë Sevigny. The film loosely tells the story of the Zodiac killer, a serial murderer who terrified San Francisco residents during the late ’60s and early ’70s, and who mystified the authorities, intensionally and successfully.
But the movie isn’t really about the brutality of the murders (and they are brutal) or the murders themselves. And the film’s not really about who actually committed the murders (though we’re led to believe who it likely is/was). This film is really about Robert Graysmith (played with an unaffected texture by Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle when the Zodiac killer began sending cryptic letters to the area’s newspapers. These hand-written letters include admissions to certain killings, matter-of-fact explanations of why he enjoyed killing people, demands that newspapers print some of his letters (which they do), and coded messages, most of which were never cracked.
But here’s a sampling of one of the few ciphers figured out: “I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest, because man is the most dangerous animal of all … I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves.” You get the rated-R idea.
After several years of letters received, unsolved murders, and unsuccessful leads, the police and reporters essentially give up trying to crack the case. But Graysmith can’t let go. He obsesses, quits his job, and starts tracking down leads let go years and years ago, crossing over several different police jurisdictions, interviewing cops, neighbors, surviving victims, and reporters. In the end, he writes two true-crime books, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked: the Identity of America’s Most Elusive Serial Killer. But this all comes with heavy prices.
And so this is a film about secrets kept and secrets we reveal, about safe and unsafe obsessions, about deaths and the ways we lead our little lives. Zodiac is a piece of gripping film-making that leaves your mouth agape and your mind wanting more.
Before I really begin this review, a big, big, oh-so-big slab of thanks to the woman working at Blockbuster who, while helping me find this flick, told me to look under “M” for “Matador” and not “T” for “The.” What ever would I have done without her?
So, now, the review. The Matador is easily one of the funniest flicks to come out of 2005; there were moments where it was hard to catch my breath I was laughing so hard. This film stars Pierce Brosnan as Julian Noble, an assassin-for-hire, who runs into Danny Wright, played by Greg Kinnear, a down-on-his-luck salesman. By random chance, they bumped into one another in a Mexican hotel bar, and they subsequently begin an odd, but useful, friendship. Julian takes Danny to a bullfight, shows him how to kill a man, helps him through a bind, and then, six months later, shows up at Danny’s doorstep in need of a big favor. Danny, reluctant but indebted, obliges.
While The Matador is definitely a dark comedy, there’s an underlying tension: righteousness versus ruthlessness. The two, the film seems to argue, are closer than we care to imagine, blurring together when we think they’re separate. Danny’s a businessman and Julian sees himself as the same, creating another theme: Machiavellianism as a way to make gains.
But while the story is fresh and fun with its serious undertones, it’s Kinnear’s pitch-perfect squirming, and Brosnan’s killer delivery of hilarious dialog that make this an absolute must-see. So, here’s just a sampling of some of Brosnan’s lines (these ain’t safe for the kiddies):
“I’m as serious as an erection problem.”
“I look like a Bangkok hooker on a Sunday morning, after the navy’s left town.”
“I need a break. There’s no retirement home for assassins is there? Archery at four. Riflery at five.”
“An assassin without confidence is a horrible thing to behold. It’s like a relief pitcher who fumbles the ball.”
“My handler, Mr. Randy, contacted me the way he always does, through an ad in the International Tribune looking for cat sitters in Bali.”
“I didn’t mean to weird you out. I was wrong, please. I just get paranoid sometimes. I’m drunk. I’m tired, and I’ve just been fornicating for the past two hours.”
A Life Less Ordinary, as its title seems to suggest, evades the typical niching done by movie reviewers. This flick is a drama, a black comedy, a crime caper, a romance, and a fantasy. I’m betting I’m leaving a category or two out. It’s all those meshed, molded and morphed into one of my favorite films of the past decade or so. I’ll say from the outset that this movie has its narrative flaws (and maybe a little unnecessary hyperbole), but I’m willing to overlook those for the sake of engaging adventure.
The story goes a little like this…. Robert Lewis — played brilliantly by Ewan McGregor — is a janitor under the employ of Mr. Naville, a stinking rich businessman, who cans Robert and replaces him with a floor-cleaning robot. After getting dumped by his girlfriend shortly thereafter, Robert goes, well, he goes ballistic, grabs a gun, busts into his former boss’s office, and kidnaps his daughter, Celine (played by Cameron Diaz). Meanwhile, God sends two angels, O’Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo), to help Robert and Celine realize that, while chaos has pushed them together, they might actually be a good fit. Hunter and Lindo are fantastic in this flick, serving as hilarious comic foils. Let’s just say the story goes equal parts weird and wonderful from there….
Thankfully, A Life Less Ordinary was written and directed by the dudes who brought us Trainspotting (so just imagine that bizarre and frenetic movie with a bit of hope and zero heroin). In the wrong hands, this could have become sentimental doggerel. Instead, we see, as the plot unfolds, that by bucking conventions A Life Less Ordinary manages to blend the true elements, good and bad, faced by any pairing of two people.
And if all that weren’t enough, this flick offers up a variegated soundtrack that helps put the pieces together. It includes: Beck, The Prodigy, The Cardigans, Bobby Darin, Elvis Presley, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Oasis, and Luscious Jackson, one of my favorite bands from the ’90s. The scene that uses R.E.M.’s “Leave” is worth the price of, well, there’s no admission really since you’re gonna rent this sucker, so it’s worth the price of Blockbuster, maybe some homemade popcorn if you’re so inclined, and a couple Diet Cokes.
The Fountain– ” a film directed by Darren Aronofsky, which stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz– ”can best be described this way:
In Act I, I had no idea what the hell was going on but couldn't stop watching because everything I saw was either as interesting as a Salvador Dali painting or compelling as a child's voice.
In Act II, I had a clearer idea of the present-tense reality of the flick, but while I was able to “figure out– what was real to the characters and what seemed imagined by the characters (which was a surprise in and of itself), I didn't feel let down because of this “discovery.–
In Act III, the elements of Act I and Act II weave together like DNA, and this lifted me into a kind of exhilarated dizziness as the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction blended together until I realized, more clearly than ever before, how our imaginations can help us successfully mold our realities.
Let me also say this, prefacing it by first saying that what I'm about to tell you isn't something I go out of my way looking for when picking a flick: this movie contains one of the sexiest and most heart-pounding gorgeous love scenes ever captured on celluloid.
This is a film you need to trust, so do yourself a favor: if you know someone who's a “movie talker– (i.e. they can't keep their lips zipped during cinematic art) steer clear of that person, even if he or she is your one and only, so you an actually enjoy, or rather, experience, this exquisite movie. This is the kind of film that should earn people National Endowment for the Arts grants.
Once you start watching The Fountain, you don't want to take your eyes off of it. So here's my advice: don't.
When you live in Ohio for a decade, you have two choices: join the cult that is Buckeye high school and college football, or do everything in your power to ignore said cult. I chose the latter, if only because I hoped to retain as much of my Empire State identity as possible. This ain’t to say I don’t dig on football (or double negatives, for that matter), because I do. I really do. And Friday Night Lights, a film loosely based on the Permian Panthers high school pigskin team, reminded me of that fact.
The film focuses on the Panthers’ 1988 season, and the small, economically depressed, west-Texas town of Odessa. Both the game sequences and the life in the hamlet are filmed with a dusty cinematography, which perfectly suits the flick, enhancing the overall tone. To show what football means to this community, the film opens with a player studying plays at the breakfast table with his mother. Early on, we hear local sports-talk radio, where callers discuss, not the Dallas Cowboys or the Houston Oilers, but rather the Permian Panthers. Football here–high school football, that is–is everything. The story is passionate and engaging, and addresses, not just sports in America, but the nature of family, racism, poverty, joy, abuse, alcoholism, hopes, the perfection of friendship, the illusion of loss.
I’d rather not give away many details of the narrative, except to say two things:
This movie avoids being a repeat performance of Hoosiers.
This movie demonstrates the apparent randomness of events–so much hangs on a single helmet, a coin toss, a yard.
The football sequences are an adrenaline rush (fight, not flight) with the intensity ofTabasco sauce, and the realism is so powerful and engaging I have no idea how they choreographed and filmed this sucker without maiming a dozen people. Pushing the energy further is the soundtrack, a brilliant score created by the instrumental post-rock outfit, Explosions in the Sky. In all seriousness, if you’re a music lover like me, it’s worth it to check out Friday Night Lights just to hear what this band has managed to do.
I’ll close with a line of dialog I found particularly compelling (it’s also a summary of one of the film’s many themes): “It took me a long time to realize there ain’t much difference between winning and losing except how the outside world treats you.”
I can’t get enough of Andy Warhol. I’ve seen every fictional film portraying him–I Shot Andy Warhol, Basquiat, The Doors, and 54. I’ve been to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. A documentary of his life is tops on my Blockbuster Total Access queue.
So why am I so obsessed? I’m not sure really, and I’d rather not waste my time at the therapist trying to figure it out fully. Let’s just say I love his art’s humor and horror, it’s ability to critique and praise our cookie-cutter culture at the same time. He broke rules. He reinvented. He inspired. He destroyed. He road coattails. He devoted himself to Christianity. He couldn’t care less.
So my fascination with Warhol, and not Edie Sedgwick, is what drew me to Factory Girl, a fictionalization of Sedgwick’s life during the 60s and the boom and bust of her relationship with Warhol. It’s incredibly important when watching Factory Girl — despite the film’s effort to do otherwise — to remember that this ain’t a documentary. The film includes blatant factual falsehoods, it conglomerates real people into single characters, it plays with time, and it distorts the truth (whatever “truth” means). But this is a fine film if you keep in mind that all of the characters are imaginary.
Factory Girl shows us the life of an heiress, Edie Sedgwick, played with brutal honesty and bravery by Siena Miller, falling in love with fame and flamboyance, giving up on a dream of being an artist for the flimsy accomplishment of celebrity for the sake of celebrity. And we also see the life of Andy Warhol, played by a well-disguised Guy Pearce, a self-obsessed artist who manipulates people and the media for his own importance. And we see their relationship burgeoning out of an admiration of the other’s power over people.
The character of Sedgwick suffered abuse from her father, grew up in an institution, and dropped out of college to pursue art. She ends up drugged and dead at 28. This film takes us on a roller-coaster journey of her “life,” that is if we were made to take ecstasy and morphine before getting on the ride. The cinematography continually befits and benefits the narrative, and the music is like the iTunes playlist I wish I owned. For art lovers, for film lovers, for acting lovers, this is a must-see movie.
Enjoy for yourself:
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* * *
(To learn more about the real Edie Sedgwick, just click here.)
I’m going to keep it a bit short and sweet this week, because what I’m going to share with you needs very little set-up.
I was originally going to review the documentary The War Tapes, and I still will, but it doesn’t really seem like Friday-night fare. Instead, I’ll share two online-videos created by Will Ferrell for his new website, Funny or Die. The first short “film” is called “The Landlord,” and the second is “Good Cop, Baby Cop.” I’ll warn you up front: both are equal parts hilarious and bordering on unethical, but I think the hilarious wins out in the end.
If your sense of humor is nearly as twisted as mine can be, you’ll probably watch each more than once. And remember: laughter is progressive.
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